


knowledge is power

by dreamsleep



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, character history, character motivation exploration, may be contradicted in future episodes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 09:32:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsleep/pseuds/dreamsleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freddie Lounds is fifteen when she starts her first blog.</p>
            </blockquote>





	knowledge is power

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd, so please forgive the errors. 
> 
> My thoughts on Freddie Lounds, and how she came to be the way she is.

Freddie Lounds knows exactly what people think of her. Two faced bitch, whore, slut, she's heard them all. Hell, there are even some people on the internet who take it upon themselves to delve into her life, to try and find every example of things that she's done wrong.

And honestly, Freddie Lounds doesn't care. Freddie Lounds has never cared about that, because if there's one thing that she knows, its that the more people people talk about her, the more people read what she writes. Writing was meant to polarize, wasn't it? A journalism professor had told her that once.

To hell with him. She wasn't a journalist, and she had never pretended to be one.

Freddie Lounds knows exactly who she is, and that is an American citizen doing what no one else has the balls to do: tell the story. 

\----

Freddie is fifteen years old, and stick thin with an explosion of uncontrollable curls spilling out of her hair. 

Freddie is fifteen when she learns how to listen. There is always someone talking in the locker room after all, whispers in the hallways. At first, all she hears are the mean things said about her. “Did you see Freddie? Ugh.” “Did you see Freddie's outfit today? It looks like a cat threw up.”

Her first lesson that she learns about real life then is to never let what people say affect you. She learns to dig fingernails into her thigh to hide the tears, to smile until your face hurts because that means that it's working.

Her second lesson is to learn how to plot revenge carefully.

She stops listening for her own name then, and that's when everything begins to become interesting.

The captain of the football team cheating on his head cheerleader girlfriend with the oboist in the marching band. Where Lily Charles had really gone (it wasn't physical rehab). That the captain of the science decathlon team did more than just Adderall. And cocaine. 

Deep down, everyone has a secret. Freddie learns how to find them. Then she learns her third lesson: how to use them.

Rumors are only juicy when they are about people who matter. Going down deep into the bowels of the student body just won't do it. The real prize lies at the top, in the hidden skeletons of the untouchable. Freddie knows from history, from English class, that no one is untouchable. Even Achilles had his heel, but finding it in people that she has only seen from a distance is difficult.

So she starts small at first. She begins with with the people no one cares about other than friends. She sees tears when some rumors turn out to be true, laughter when others turn out to be nothing more than a story told untrue. She learns to find the nuggets of truth, learns what can be believed, and what will not be.

Freddie makes a breakthrough when she catches very married Mr. Hayworth with valedictorian Cecilia Rutherford in the chemistry prep room one day. Freddie learns her fourth lesson that day: if an opportunity arises, seize it. Wide eyed, she pulls out her phone and takes a picture. Then another, then another.

Life is never the same after she sends those pictures anonymously to the local town paper. Especially for Freddie Lounds.

Freddie Lounds is fifteen when she starts her first blog.


End file.
